On the assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Counterterrorism Blog:
Analysis of the Bhutto Assassination

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is a tragedy, and likely a strategic setback as well. It is tragic because, despite the notorious corruption of Bhutto’s administration, in many ways she represented the best that Pakistan has to offer. Bhutto boldly opposed the fundamentalists’ dark vision for Pakistan and was openly pro-West. After the unsuccessful attempt on Bhutto’s life in October, she called out by name the figures whom she believed were complicit.

Jihad Watch:
Bhutto "champion of moderate face of Islam"?

Calling Benazir Bhutto a moderate Muslim is one manifestation of what's wrong with the term, and how confusing and misleading it can be. Benazir Bhutto was indeed a Muslim, at least nominally, but when she was in power in Pakistan what she championed was a Western secularist, socialist vision, not an Islamic one by any stretch of the imagination. She did not, in other words, offer an alternative vision of Islam itself, shorn of its draconian and supremacist elements. She didn't offer or stand for an alternative understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah that taught that Muslims should not wage war for Islam, subjugate unbelievers, or institute stoning and amputation and the rest. Rather, she essentially advocated that in some areas Islamic law should be set aside. That, along with her gender, is what aroused the ire of the Islamic leaders in Pakistan against her, as it has against Musharraf.

Andrew McCarthy @ NRO:
Benazir Bhutto: Killed by the real Pakistan.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.